The Willem Love Collective
on their reggabwoW project.

Imagine logging on to h2g2 one day, expecting to find your usual
conversations, when suddenly there's a special personal message
posted to
your user space. Clicking on the link reveals a message with the
subject
'you are loved...' and contains a short note telling you why you are
such a
wonderful person. This is what happened to me a few weeks, what has
happened
to a few other Researchers, and may, in fact probably will, happen to
you.
These very flattering messages are being posted by the Willem Love
Collective, in a project that has been given the name 'reggabwoW'.

If you haven't yet guessed it, 'reggabwoW', is the
name 'Wowbagger' spelt
backwards. Wowbagger was the character in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy
books, who decided to insult each and every person in the universe.
The
'Reverse Wowbagger' project aims to greet each and every active
researcher
on h2g2 and tell them they are loved. Naturally, a project of this
ambition
requires quite a lot of effort, and so there are a number of
Researchers
involved, operating under the Umbrella of the 'Willem Love
Collective'. I
met up with the collective to talk to them about this novel idea.

The first question I had to ask was about who exactly the Willem
Love
Collective are.

Sea: 'There are a lot of us; so many that I'm never quite
sure who
is actually in the Collective! There's Not Banned Yet, Happydude, a
girl
called Ben, Dancer, Willem, me, Gw7en, Fenny, Big Bad Mr T,
purplejenny,
Barton,
Dastardly, Comrade Rumble, JLC, Lynne, the Shee, sea,
Arlecchino, and - last, but certainly not least - Mourning Becomes
Electra.
But I don't claim to have a definitive list.'

The collective has an interesting and heartwarming story. One
thing doing
these interviews has shown is just how kind and caring the h2g2
community
can be. From clubs like the Mutual Admiration Society to simple,
caring
replies to journal postings, h2g2 seems to be full of love. As the
group
explain, the formation of the Willem Love Collective follows in
exactly this
vein.

Sea: 'Basically, a guy called Willem
was having a really rough time a
while ago, and so a bunch of h2g2 Researchers got together and helped
him
through it. We made the Willem Love Collective to give him, and other
people, a place to go where everyone cares, and where
things are pleasant.'

a girl
called Ben: 'Willem was suffering what on this
site should probably be called a 'long dark teatime of the soul'.
Thankfully
he sent an email to one of his online friends here, and she contacted
as
many others as she could. A group of people who knew Willem from h2g2
and
emails then spent hours trying to contact him in every way they
could.'

Dancer: 'The collective grew from
that one night of deep concern where
we spent hours on Instant Messenger, h2g2, email and even the
telephone to
the Pretorian
Police Dept trying to get the message through to Will that he is
loved, is
special, is important and that the world would be poorer without him.
Over
the following days and weeks, more and more people have joined the
project,
and we came up with the Reverse Wowbagger idea, which was quickly
taken up
with great enthusiasm by the rapidly growing Love Collective.'

Willem gives his account.

Willem: 'I am a 29-year-old guy who
lives in South
Africa and suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. I have had virtually
no
real-life friends, but have made lots of friends through the
internet -
primarily h2g2. These friends of mine helped me when things seemed
dark and
hopeless for me. Now, in large part thanks to their help, I am
getting lots
of help in RL, and I hope making friends here too. I may soon even be
getting to meet
in person one of the people that I have met here.'

A question I've asked a lot is whether h2g2 is a community. I've
worked
for many years now with various organisations to create and build online
communities. Whether projects are successful or not has often been a
big
topic of discussion. I've even spent time working with a University
phD
student who was examining examples of online communities. 'Community'
is an
ideal which often doesn't even exist within the real world, so creating
one
over the enormous, inpersonal internet can seem like a big challenge.
Nevertheless it does seem to happen, and the ways in which online
groups can
become communities is often quite amazing. This project strikes me as
one
such example. I ask the Collective whether they think h2g2 can
generally be
called a community...

Sea: 'Yes, I think so. What else
would you call such an enormous
number of
like-minded people who gather in a common area to share experiences
and
thoughts? I've always considered h2g2 to be a bit of a utopia; for
the most
part we get along pretty well and, well, we care about
each other... we had a few slight problems when the bbc took over, but
things
are getting back to normal, I think.'

Dancer: 'Sure it is. And not only is
it a wonderful community, it's
also one of the only online communities I know that were saved from
getting
commercialised with pornos and product selling all over them, and I
guess we
do have the BBC to
thank for that. The major parts I love in this community are the
friendliness and kindness of people, the sharing of knowledge and
feelings
and the support we give each other.'

a girl
called Ben: I certainly know of no other online place which
could have created the love necessary for the intervention that
evening. At
the time I was reminded very
strongly of how the village I lived in reacted when some twelve year
olds
raped
a seven year old way back when. A group of people coming together to
take
action
in compassion, strength, sorrow, fear, and sheer bloody love. However
I
think h2g2 is several communities. One thing which I personally found
enriching about the time immediately after September 11th was that we
all
came out of our different ghettos and posted in the Twin Towers
threads. I
met long term researchers I never even knew about in those
threads.'

Willem: 'Not yet... There are
communities in h2g2, but the entire site
is not a community. There are pieces and people that are loose from
the rest
and there
is some internal division. I think we can do with activities to unify
and
strengthen the various communities that exist here, and I think the
WLC
can help with such community-building.'

Community-building is a never-ending process as communities,
especially
online ones, are in a constant state of fluctuation and change. The
Willem
Love Collective and the reggabwoW project aim to help build a better
community and reach out to more people. I ask the group how else the
Guide
can be made an even happier, friendlier place.

Willem: 'By encouraging positive
interactions so that people talk to
each other
more, learn from each other more. The reggabwoW project does
encourage that,
but there is still much more that we can do. I will have ideas over
time and
suggest them to people. We need to encourage tolerance and
open-mindedness
too. There is still much intolerance, bias and narrowmindedness here.
But
instead of attacking such attitudes, we at the WLC can simply put in
a lot
of work into displaying the opposite, positive, loving attitudes to
people.'

Sea: 'I think the biggest thing that
we need to do is try not to take
things too
personally. Everything starts to get a little tense when people get
offended. The universe is a fun place, we just have to know when to be
serious and when not to.'

Dancer: 'Well, I think that very few
active researchers get it wrong,
the rest are
close to ideal friendliness. The guide itself is working on it, and I
think
there's a good crew up in the towers. I don't agree with everything
they do
or decide, but I guess even they
have to do things they don't really 100% agree on, just that the job
has
stuff you have to do. I had that lot in the army, making decisions I
don't
like'

a girl
called Ben: 'I am not sure it's neccesary to actually do
anything to make the community a better place. Friendliness is good,
but
happiness is a
by-product not an end-product and you cannot make someone or something
happy. Neither is it right that anyone should be happy all of the
time. We
learn in our troughs, though we may prefer the peaks.'

I ask what the group liked about the idea behind the Willem Love
Collective and the reggabwoW project.

Dancer: 'There are two major points
in it that I like. First is that
is is impartial and it is set to tell absolutely everyone that they
are loved and respected. The second major thing is that it is a
collabarative project. Everyone who asked to join in with the effort
has been accepted, and it continues to draw people in. It is a proof that
people
still care enough to give of their
precious time in order to makes others feel good and, as a Guardian
Angel,
I am Patron Saint of making people feel good about themselves so it
is
very important to me. Other good things about it are making friends
and
getting to express emotions...'

Willem: 'What I like about the
Collective is that it is an 'oasis of
love and positivity'. The goal of the group is neatly framed in a way
that
is almost guaranteed to be
constructive and valuable. The reggabwoW project is framed in such a
way
that we have to endeavour to see everything that is good in people,
and do
something for
them that they will appreciate and that will improve their
outlook.'

a girl
called Ben: 'It is love in action - love as a wanton act of
communication - love almost as an act of agression, if that is not
too much
of an oxymoron. And it is
also a communal thing. Different individuals sign on and edit the
pages. It
is like tending a garden, you are never sure what will have sprung up
while
you were away.'

The target to send a message to every Researcher on h2g2 is very
ambitious. I ask how long will it take to greet everyone.

Dancer: There are a lot of people to
greet and, after we're done, new people are will still be joining all the time.
It will be a long time until
everybody has been greeted, but all the people who log on a lot will be
greeted quite
quickly I believe, as people tend to go through the 'Who is online'
list and
greet people from there. Wowbagger the infinitely prolonged had all
of eternity to
insult everyone in
the universe of time and space. The Love Collective can last as long
as
there are the people with the will to do it...

The Shee: 'h2g2 is always going to
move forward,
so we are going to have to keep moving forward as well. Right now, I
am trying to avoid people with 'New This Week!' on their tags,
because I
don't know if they are ever going to come back. People that we have
personally talked to
before, or met, or know from something else, like The Post, are also
more
likely to be greeted right now because we have something to say to
them.
We're going to get there! Hey, we are up to 60 people at this exact
moment,
and we've only been trying to do this for about two weeks! I think
that is a
decent number... Sixty people is a lot!'

a girl
called Ben: 'Forever, or as long as h2g2 exists, since new
people will keep on joining!'

Finally, I ask how other people can get involved.

Willem: 'Very easily! They only need
to ask... People can simply
contribute some good and kind words to our pages or, if they have
time, they can join the reggabwoW
project. And if anyone has any other really good ideas, then suggest
them to us, and start
a project of your own!'

The reggabwoW project is a fantastic project, and is an example of
h2g2 at its most caring. If you haven't yet received your loving
greeting, then keep an eye on your user space, one day it will be you!

Frankie Roberto

Next Week: Witty Ditty on the health service, Tennis and
WD-42.

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